I was surprised to read that American Hustle has been nominated for TEN Academy Awards. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but I guess I didn't realize it was that great. The movie was adequately directed, but I didn't see any "outstanding achievement" there. Amy Adams did most of her acting with her cleavage. I do see how the other three actors would be nominated -- Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, and especially Jennifer Lawrence. Did anyone else see the movie?

Gravity also received ten nominations, but most were for technical achievement.

At first I didn't recognize Christian Bale under all that facial foliage he was wearing. The movie is funny and doesn't take itself too seriously...I liked it a lot. But it is just a one-joke movie, isn't it?

I want to second that. It is very entertaining, from start to finish. It's easy to imagine the excitement the real-life Monuments Men must have felt whenever they found a concealed treasure. The movie is episodic, as it alternates among different lines of investigation going on simultaneously. The individual scenes are great, but the movie doesn't flow easily from one to another, giving it all a choppy feeling. One nitpicky thing. Movies set in the past have to be careful about avoiding anachronisms, especially linguistic ones. Twice Clooney says, "We have been tasked with recovering works of art..." At the time of World War II, the word "task" was still a noun. Calvin & Hobbes.

Edited to add that my son just called to warn me not to go see The Monuments Men -- ha! Not for everybody, I guess.

Well, he went in with lowered expectations because of the lukewarm reviews, but he just found it preposterous that those men would go into enemy territory without any protection by real soldiers. Everyone except Clooney was miscast. The movie would have been better if they'd shown more of the investigations that led to the discoveries (like the mines), the detective work involved -- and I have to agree with him on that point. Horrible thought: he might have enjoyed it more if he hadn't read Edsel's book the movie is based on. I didn't read the book, so it was a case of ignorance is bliss for me.